CSEPP to practice for destruction

BY RYAN GARRETT/REGISTER NEWS WRITER

The Blue Grass Army Depot and other parts of the community will be abuzz Wednesday as emergency workers respond to a fictitious disaster scenario involving the release of chemical warfare agent.

"We're going to come in here Wednesday like it's a regular workday," said Michael Bryant, public information officer for the Madison County Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program.

"Once we get that phone call, we need to start doing what we would do if it was the real thing," he said.
Emergency sirens will send out a warning between 9 and 10 a.m., and the workers will kick it into high gear, running exercises to secure Waco Elementary School, decontaminate patients at Berea Hospital and Pattie A. Clay Regional Medical Center and responding to concerned phone calls, Bryant said.

The Emergency Operations Center and Joint Information Center will be filled with decision makers sending out faux press releases and conducting interviews with media actors, he said.

The exercise will allow all jurisdictions to ensure that their emergency response plans would work together during an actual emergency. With more than a dozen participating entities and more than 150 individuals involved, all local emergency agencies and surrounding counties will have a role in the exercise.

"What we'll try to do during this exercise is practice some of the things we've got in place," Bryant said.
Emergency agencies began preparing for the annual exercise almost immediately after last year's was finished, Bryant said, and the Army and the county as a whole have made several improvements since last year's exercise.

Waco Elementary and Clark-Moores Middle schools have been overpressurized, and the Madison County Emergency Operations Center and the Joint Information Center have been reconfigured to make them more efficient, Bryant said.

The Madison County Emergency Management Agency has enhanced and increased training for emergency responders, and the Army and the local emergency management have updated software to better track agent plumes.

"It's better to do it in an exercise," Bryant said. "If the real thing happens, you know this is the way we need to do it. This is the way we have to do it."